


The Court of 100

by crookedqueen



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Dark Fantasy, F/M, Futuristic, Slow Burn, royals au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 20:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3704621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crookedqueen/pseuds/crookedqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“the castle, it seemed, disappeared into the sky. from the outside, Bellamy knew what the other kingdoms must’ve thought of it, of them, all glass and steel, silver and excess.” || the 100 as a high fantasy, futuristic royal au.</p><p>rated: T [might transition to M]</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Court of 100

**Author's Note:**

> the court of 100 is based on this graphic I made for it on Tumblr: http://crooked-queen.tumblr.com/post/115590345754/the-100-as-royalty-au-the-court-of-100-insp
> 
> this fic is [bellamy x clarke] and [lincoln x octavia] oriented but does not revolve entirely around the ships. more for fans of highly au narratives and slow burn pairings. enjoy! - N

_“Just remember that the only question in a house is who is to rule. The rest is only dancing around that, trying not to look it in the eye.”  
\- Deathless_

The castle, it seemed, disappeared into the sky.  
  
From the outside, Bellamy knew what the other kingdoms must’ve thought of it, of them, all glass and steel, silver and excess. There were times when the overcast wrapped around it, made it look like two daunting spirals of ice wrapped around each other, the point where they met stabbing into the sky. But there were other times, too, when the sun hit it just right, and it seemed like their entire kingdom floated on air and pirouetted straight into nothingness.  
  
But from the inside, there was only light.  
  
The halls were painted pale blues, some translucent, so that one could see the duchess’s ladies in waiting draping silver medallions and strands of pearls over their new dresses or the king and princess’s guardspeople polishing their shimmering shields.  
  
Bellamy glanced down at the flimsy pale blue guard jacket clinging to his own chest, the Ark Kingdom's emblem, silver circles interwoven with their mantra मैं मौत बन कर रहा हूँ, _I am become death_ , in the language of one of the First Tongues. It came from his home, the second spiral, nothing like how the royals of the court lived in the first. Bellamy traced over the silver finishes down the corridor, leaving spots of dirt from his fingers behind.  
  
_“But you are lucky to be in the court at all,”_ his mother had told him when he was fifteen, rebellious, and entirely uninterested in the position of guardsman to the second spiral. Very different, of course, from what he was now.  
  
Twenty-three and rebellious.  
  
_“Mom –“_  
  
_“Lucky, Bellamy. That’s how this kingdom works. Two children per noble, one child per servant. There are one-hundred slots in this court, and you have been chosen for one of them. Without a trade, without a purpose, you are exiled outside of the castle’s gates, its shield, to whatever lays beyond it.”_  
  
_“And that would be so bad?”_  
  
His mother had cupped his chin then, firmly, to ensure that he was listening. _“You have everything you could ever want here, Bellamy. Why would you want to leave?”_  
  
Freedom, he thought now. For Octavia.  
  
When he reached the end of the hall, Bellamy stared down at the marble below his feet. Floors and floors down, hidden in a grassy nook between the two spirals was his sister. The second child. It brought him back to his reason for being there, in the first spiral, in front of the one room that touched the clouds.  
  
Princess Clarke’s.  
  
It was out of his jurisdiction, sure. If anyone caught him there, he’d get…how many lashes? Or would they just cast him out to die between kingdoms?  
  
Who would take care of Octavia then?  
  
But he knew that even the princess’s most highly qualified guards were in the throne room for some sort of hearing this morning. The floor had cleared, the royals were drunk on power, and the second spiral wouldn’t miss him. Bellamy was just a passing ghost.  
  
_Who’d done this before. ___  
  
He slipped a silver pin from his sleeve and pressed it into the princess’s lock until he heard the telling click and turn. And then he was in.  
  
Bellamy swallowed, jaw clenched, and shut the door behind him.  
  
Clarke Griffin’s room was one he knew better than the four walls of his own. It always smelled of roses and water and earth there, though the girl was born from the sky. He breathed it in, leaned against the window beside her grand bed, plush and inviting, the clouds outside giving it the illusion of flight. Perfume bottles and vases were used as paperweights to hold down the water stained papers cluttering her vanity, her floor, her desk. Silk fell from the ceiling, and dresses lay abandoned on her chair.  
  
And then there was the wall.  
  
On it was the only painting Bellamy had ever seen. (They didn’t waste art history lessons on the guard.) But he felt that this…this was enough. Every time he snuck into Clarke’s chambers, Bellamy got to visit all four kingdoms. She’d painted them all right there.  
  
At the top left corner was their castle, the Ark’s. She’d colored the spirals a pale pink, rather than the dull silver they actually were, then used dots of pastels to portray the luminescent shield that stood guard around it. Lush grass spilled over from the doorways and a water moat kept it all in. At the corner, leaning from one of the windows, he swore that a princess stood next to a blue-clad guard. But Bellamy wasn’t so sure.  
  
To the right of it was the Ground Court.  
  
She’d used real dirt for this, smudged it with shards of grass and blood she must have pricked from her own finger. Stonewalls and brick towers were camouflaged into their forests, jewels cluttered the leaves, and stick thrones rested in thorny brambles. She’d drawn their people smiling and hunting, all wearing beautiful gowns of velvet and fur pelts.  
  
Below it was the Weather Court. Its castle resembled more of a bomb shelter than anything royal, but had the spires and arches to prove itself worthy of a kingdom. She’d drawn it in grays and blacks, like a ghost town. Its king stood in a circle of his white-coated soldiers, his arms and legs replaced by skeleton bones. Around him, pale princesses danced with empty eyes and red dresses. Boys lay bloodless on the ground.  
  
And at last there was Reaper Nation. A nation, they called it, because there was no castle, no king or queen, or court. Not technically. Their tunnels, though archaic, were more intricate than the Ark’s spirals would ever be, all blood-soaked bone yards, ashes and fire. She’d made up the paths that they took and drawn them, not as the monsters Bellamy had always been told the Reapers were but as half-masked men and women, eating around fires, wrapped in chains and metal.  
  
On the wall, Clarke had painted war stories, the great battle between the Ground Court and the Reapers that had split the once unified kingdom in half. The day the Weatherians slayed fifty of the Reapers’ men just to watch them die. And the war that had raged on not so long ago, between the sky and the ground.  
  
The war that had killed their king and given Clarke the throne.  
  
Beyond that, Clarke always painted the nothingness beyond the kingdoms with different colors, sometimes green grass, others stormy oceans. This time, a fresh yellow stood in for imaginary wheat fields. She’d pockmarked them with her own scribbles, question marks, _What’s out there? How do we –_  
  
“The princess is expected in just a moment, stand guard,” came a muffled call outside of the door.  
  
Fuck.  
  
Bellamy swiped a finger across the fresh yellow paint, an impulsive move, but it left a bit of himself on the beyond.  
  
A bit of the beyond on himself.  
  
He turned quickly, began to stash fabric and combs into his satchel, little trinkets for Octavia. If there was any remorse in him – Bellamy doubted there was – he had to ignore it. It was because of the royals that his sister was in hiding, that he always caught her with tear-stained cheeks begging to see just a tiny bit of the spirals. It was all he could do to bring a piece of them to her.  
  
And so he made sure to take what Clarke wouldn’t miss – as if he even knew the girl. He grabbed a small lip gloss, a scarf that had fallen under her bed, and an abandoned blouse near the curtain.  
  
But not the pencils.  
  
Never the pencils.  
  
“Until next time, Princess,” Bellamy said to the empty room, half grinning. He poised his hand on the knob, pressed his ear to the door, carefully calculating his exit.  
  
It was then that the shrill sound of an alarm blared.  
  
And the world began to tremble.


End file.
